Recruitment · Updated October 2026
An exit interview is a structured conversation, or written survey, with an employee who is leaving, aimed at finding out why they are going and what the company could have done differently. Its real value is as data: a pile of honest exits tells you more about your employee turnover than any engagement survey of the people who stayed.
There are three common formats. An HR-led conversation is the default and costs nothing. A written or online form works when volume is high, and gives people room to be blunt without being watched. A third-party interviewer (a consultant or a vendor) is used for senior exits or where trust in HR is low, because the employee is not talking to someone who will sit across from them in the cafeteria next week.
Timing matters more than most teams admit. Hold it too early and the employee is still protecting their handover and their reference. Hold it after the last day and they have stopped caring enough to reply. A few days before the last working day, after handover is mostly done, tends to work.
Departing staff are cagey for sensible reasons: they want a clean relieving letter, a good reference and no friction over their settlement. So say plainly that the feedback does not affect any of those, and that it is reported in aggregate. Then ask open questions rather than a rating grid: what made you start looking, what would have changed your mind, what did your manager do that helped or hurt, and would you come back. Do not argue or explain when you hear a complaint. Write it down.
The step most companies skip is the last one. Tag each exit by reason (pay, manager, growth, relocation, health), by team and by tenure, then review the pattern quarterly. Exits clustering under one manager, or in the first year, are a story that single interviews hide. Pair the reasons with the split between voluntary and involuntary attrition and your attrition rate, and feed it into the hiring and retention plan.
No law requires one. It is a company practice, and employees can usually decline it. Making it a condition for releasing dues or documents is a bad idea and invites a dispute.
It cannot be fully anonymous in a face-to-face interview, so promise confidentiality in practice: share themes, not names, and keep the raw notes with HR only. Anonymous online forms are a useful second channel.
Treat it as the polite answer. Probe with what the new role offers beyond salary, and compare against stay-interview or eNPS feedback from current staff before you conclude that pay is the whole story.
In the HRMS employee record or a restricted HR folder, not on a shared drive. Notes often name managers, so keep access narrow.
Put numbers behind the findings with the Attrition Rate Calculator, and read our piece on employee attrition for what to do with the pattern.